Atlanta to Providence, Rhode Island to Atlanta to Houston
How appropriate! I
mean the title of this week’s reading “Weathering Storms”. We flew up to Providence to see Patrick this
weekend. The weekend started off great,
we saw Jim Dyer, a close friend from Dayton at the Atlanta airport. Jim was on his way to see his new grandson,
and we got to spend some time together and catch up on each other’s lives.
We arrived in Providence to 37 degrees, torrential rain, and
heavy winds. We were definitely
weathering storms. It was awful weather
for most of the weekend we were there.
But it isn’t just the weather, or wasn’t the weather, that created the
storms for me. I have to confess, this
is very far outside my element. As
Laurel notes, she grew up in the city of Pittsburgh, so Providence doesn’t hold
the same issues for her. I grew up in
the country, and have lived my life in the suburbs. Plus, I’m the one who does all of the
driving, and the Providence roads are painful enough, but with torrential
rains, it creates a new level of difficulties.
I have a special trepidation for Patrick’s apartment and
neighborhood. Patrick lives in the
ghetto, slums, low rent district, whatever definition you would give to an area
such as this. The building is run down,
it smells, the carpet is soiled horribly, the walls are peeling, the railings
are loose (do you get the picture yet?).
You constantly hear sirens as police or ambulances go to the next
crisis.
When we pulled up, I looked up to the porch, and Patrick was
waiting there. We got out of the car,
and there was an African-American man yelling at someone in a car, something
about a cell phone, and he had a pit bull with him, off its leash. I quickly eyed Patrick and then eyed Laurel,
and worried, is this pit bull going to attack one of them? The man put the pit bull on its leash, and
said, “Don’t worry about her, she’s friendly, she won’t hurt you.” Patrick joked with him about what a good
looking dog it was, and he said, “Want to buy her?” This is how the weekend started.
We went to dinner that night at a pizza place a few blocks
down, and as we walked there, in the rain, we passed a bickering
African-American couple, not sure if they were homeless, they didn’t seem
completely coherent or sane, but we quickly passed them by. We went to the pizza place, and had an
excellent meal. That is the one thing I
thought about as I sat there at dinner.
The people in the restaurant were incredibly friendly, and I guess that
is my main point of all of this. Not
once, have I had a bad experience in Providence, or in Patrick’s neighborhood. OK, the driving sucks, I’ve had some people
with road rage issues toward me, but the people you meet are incredibly
friendly, they are just nice, normal people, even if they don’t look like me,
talk like me or act like me. I just
don’t feel comfortable there, and that is all on me, no one else. I struggle in a climate of poverty, I feel guilty, I feel like an outsider, my heart aches the whole time I'm there. As this week’s reading described, sometimes
we take a step back in our spiritual journey, which is OK. I definitely took a step back this weekend, I
realized that I am not viewing everyone as my neighbor, and I need to work on that.
Tuesday night was the awards ceremony at Georgia Gwinnett
College where I received the School of Business Part time Teaching Award. It was a wonderful ceremony where many
students were recognized for their academic accomplishments. As various students were recognized, some of
whom were my former students, and you heard their stories, you heard stories
of first generation college students, students who came from various countries,
suffered many difficulties, but they were committed to succeeding. As I scanned the great menagerie of races,
ethnicity, and most likely, religions, I realized why I do what I do, or did
what I did. Laurel and I have talked, we
were also first generation college students years ago, although we did have
siblings who paved the path for us.
While
it would be a stretch to say these students were the ones I needed for my
survival, I can say these students gave me life when I needed it. Their energy, their commitment, their desire
to learn, breathed life into me. It’s
hard to explain the satisfaction you can get from teaching, but I tried to do
it in the biography that I wrote for my award:
“Seven years ago, Steve reached out to Dr. Tyler Yu about a part-time
teaching position. Since then he has
taught various accounting classes each semester, and will be finally “retiring”
from teaching this year. While Steve has
always had an appreciation for the work that teachers do, he learned that it
takes a great deal of hard work, dedication, patience and creativity to be a
teacher at the college level.
Steve tries to bring his work experience with him to the classroom, to
not only teach his students about accounting, but to also teach them about
business through the use of real work examples. Steve’s goal was to give back to students,
and help them just like so many teachers have helped him through his education
process, many years ago. What Steve
found was that he learned a great deal more from his students than he taught
them. These seven years have been
incredibly rewarding, and he has so much appreciation for his students, and
also Dr. Yu, Kathleen Pinson, Dr. Jim Weisel, and Dr. Janita Rawls for all of
their help and support.”
This was such a bittersweet night for me. With my job, with my travel schedule, I just
can’t do it anymore. To be honest, it’s
also not fair to Laurel, as I often say, I’m off chasing and fighting windmills
like Don Quixote, while she has to deal with the reality of our lives. I just can’t do it anymore, but it hurts so
bad to leave it. I can’t believe what I
received over the last seven years, it was so much more than I gave, and I’m so
thankful for that.
Just a few more things and then I'm done.
Clinging Cross - To celebrate my seven years of teaching, I gave a Clinging Cross to Kathleen Pinson. More than anyone, she has been the one to guide me, nurture me and train me to be a teacher. I never imagined when I first started seven years ago, how hard it is. She was always there with advice and counseling. Anytime I stopped by her office, no matter what she had going on, she would greet me with that smile and "Hello my friend! Come on in!" I could learn something from that.
Thank You? - At the beginning of the church service this week, our Senior Pastor, Chris Henry, thanked us all for being there. It was spring break in the area, so various people were traveling, but Chris thanked those who were up all night with babies (like him), those who were older or tired, those who had ailments or illnesses, all of us, he thanked us for being there. I sat there thinking about our choice, we took a 6 am flight out of Providence, so we could be at church. I never thought twice about it (OK, I did think once about it), because it is Lent, and I wanted to be at church to hear the sermon, to experience the service, to be at Adult Education. Our wanting to be at church had nothing to do with us, but it had everything to do with what we were getting from church.
Perfect Timing – Having
said that about wanting to be at church, we had incredible timing on when we
arrived. Due to a flight delay, we got
to Adult Education a bit late. We
arrived as this wonderful woman, Bette, was telling a story about playing her harp for people who are suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. I was mesmerized by the story. She described how patients, who hadn’t shown
any ability to recognize anything around them, would hear the music, would hear
her playing hymns on the harp, and they would start humming, or whistling,
along. It was an amazing story to hear,
and I was so thankful to get there just in time to hear it.
Later, Prue Swerlick, who is doing a wonderful job leading
our class along with Kay Stewart, closed our class with “Be Thou My Vision”, as
our closing prayer. This has always been
my favorite hymn, and I get teary-eyed every time I hear it. Afterward, Jay Scott came up and talked about
the Van Morrison version of “Be Thou My Vision” and playing it for his father’s
funeral. It took me back to many years
ago, when I was lost and didn’t know if I’d ever find my way back. I had left Laurel, I had left Megan and
Kelly, and I was drifting, I was living at friend’s houses, sleeping in spare
bedrooms, sleeping on the floor. I had
lost my way completely, and the one thing that kept me sane was listening to
Van Morrison’s “Hymns to the Silence”.
I’d listen to it every night, and I’d listen to “Be Thou My Vison” every
night. Eventually, I came to my senses,
I found my way back, and thankfully, Laurel didn’t give up on me. It still amazes me how those little things,
hearing those stories, sharing those stories in Adult Education, can tie it all
together.
And so I look at this past week, and I realize, I did
weather some storms. I realize from my
trip to Providence, I’m not who I want to be yet. But I also realize, I’m not who I was either. I can be so much more, but I am so much more
than I was. I’m still a work in
progress, I have a long way to go, but God’s not finished with me yet. And to close, stanza 3 from “Be Thou My
Vision”:
“Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise
Thou mine inheritance, now and always
Thou and Thou only, first in my heart
High King of Heaven, my Treasures Thou art”
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